Good morning,

Happy early new year! It was a great week, as usual, here at Puck: Bill Cohan ran the numbers on Shari Redstone’s options; Matt Belloni happened upon a potential Iger successor; Dylan Byers enumerated the insidious challenges awaiting the new C.E.O. of The Washington Post; Julia Alexander revealed the real winner of the streaming wars; Lauren Sherman answered a John Galliano riddle; Tina Nguyen got the readout from the Hill on the Biden impeachment mess; and Julia Ioffe envisaged the real endgame for Putin.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan explains how David Zaslav might get his claws in Paramount.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers wonders whether Mark Thompson’s Times playbook will work at CNN.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni reveals Hollywood’s Hero of the Year—and a potential successor to Bob Iger.

SILICON VALLEY:
Julia Alexander homes in on Google’s streaming business Vulcan chess.

WASHINGTON:
Tara Palmeri dials up the town’s biggest political power players (and Roger Stone) for their wildest ’24 predictions.
and…
Julia Ioffe talks to the videographer who chronicled the siege of Mariupol.
and…
Abby Livingston assesses how the McCarthy-Gaetz proxy war could spill into the ’24 congressional primaries.
and…
Peter Hamby and Tina Nguyen trace the roots of MAGA Youth, while Tina gets the early readout on the Biden impeachment inquiry.

PODCASTS:
Matt Belloni bestows his second annual Townies, the thinking person’s Oscars, on The Town.
and…
Tara Palmeri and Axios’s Alex Thompson discuss Biden’s inability to accept his age issues on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Ben Landy and Lauren Sherman contemplate Kanye West’s comeback odds on The Powers That Be.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to take advantage of our article gifting feature. You can share our work with your colleagues, friends, and family. Subscribers are entitled to 5 article gifts per month.

This note was the seed of what would become Teddy’s instant classic, The Only Living Boy in Palo Alto, the most thoughtful and intimate portrait of this disgraced boy genius, who was then cooped up in his childhood home, G.P.S. monitor around his ankle, comforted only by his new dog, his bewildered parents, and his grander delusions about the outcome of his upcoming trial. (This fall, S.B.F. was found guilty on seven counts of fraud.)

The Only Living Boy in Palo Alto has an exalted place in the growing oeuvre of S.B.F. scholarship. Teddy, after all, is the foremost expert on the guy. He’s known him for years, since well before he was famous, and charted his rise and fall with acuity and fervor and, it should be noted, expansive circumspection. His reportage also happened to be one of my favorite stories that Puck published all year—and, for what it’s worth, our company’s highest subscriber-generating article of 2023.

Looking over the list of stories that generated the most new subscriptions is a fun and interesting pastime. It’s certainly not a full encapsulation of Puck’s gestalt—after all, it doesn’t accurately capture the consumption habits of the C.E.O.s, senators, producers, agents, White House denizens, private equity executives, fashion machers, power lawyers, and other informed citizens who comprise our community. But it is, nevertheless, a fascinating snapshot of the intellectual erogenous zones of the chattering classes. And, if nothing else, it might provide others within our ecosystem some useful reading recommendations during this somnolent hibernatory period.

A look across the list of these pieces suggests a few leitmotifs. In The Last Days of SVB, Bill Cohan offers precisely the unique mix of expert reporting and financial expertise that only he—a former M&A banker turned bestselling author—can confer upon his beat. His probing exposé on the suicide of a generationally talented investment banker, What Was Eating Tom Lee, demonstrated his unmatched proximity to the true inside conversation coursing through haute finance C-suites. (Another list-topper, A Private Equity Boardroom Coup, reinforces the point.)

In Hollywood, Puck founding partner Matt Belloni is a singular figure—the most connected, omniscient, brilliant narrator at work today (and, likely, ever). He also has an extraordinarily sensitive radar for the anxieties of the industry, especially amid these turbulent times. This innate skill was manifested via the popularity of his expert and delicious Casualties of the Costner-Yellowstone Crossfire and Why Everyone Is Dropping Scooter Braun, the latter of which became a full-blown viral sensation. The success of Matt’s annual prognostication issue of What I’m Hearing, his genre-defining private email, also demonstrated his enormous influence on the industry.

You might not be surprised that Zaz Brings in the Pain Sponge, Dylan Byers’ report on David Zaslav’s post-Chris Licht CNN recovery mission, was also among our pieces that attracted the most subscribers this year. It won’t shock anyone that Lauren Sherman’s exquisite Scenes from the Tiffany-LVMH Marriage was also high on the list. Nor will it confound you that Eriq Gardner’s DeNiro and the Nastiest Assistant Legal Saga Ever brought in legions of new members to our company. After all, Zaz, Arnault, and ignominious legal behavior are Puck touchstones. Similarly, loyal readers could have fathomed the magnetic power of Baratunde Thurston’s Harry & Meghan in History, and Julia Alexander’s Iger’s $27.5 Billion Hulu Question.

A perusal of this list also indicated, a great many times, the prescience of my partners. In Ronny on the Run, way back in the spring, Tara Palmeri brilliantly and humorously presaged his Chernobyl-like candidacy. Ditto Tina Nguyen’s excellent The DeSantis Consultant Mind Trap. Peter Hamby was way ahead of his peers in explicating Biden’s real electoral challenges, which are expertly highlighted in Biden, Gen Z, and the Illiberal Left.

But if you only have time to read one piece this holiday weekend, I’d turn your attention to a pair of Julia Ioffe joints that perspicaciously and boldly examine the horrors of October 7 with remarkably lucidity. In Tragedy in Israel, Julia confronts the chilling reality of the two-state solution. Horror in the Holy Land contemplates the path forward. Taken as a whole, these are the stories of our time, and exactly what you should expect from Puck once again in 2024.

Happy New Year,
Jon